dum vita est, spes est
by Madame Rhea Di'Ey
Summary: Our hearts burnt out a long time ago; so why, then, do their ashes still ache beneath our ribcage? [Cirucci. Szayel. Nemu. Ishida. AU, where everyone is damaged goods, and nothing is ever fine.]


**Author's Note: **This was supposed to be so much darker and longer, but then something happened and now it's not a tragedy. Whoa.  
DISCLAIMER: Whaddap, Bleach ain't mine. This sure is though.  
_**Note #2**__: _Don't ask me where this came out from. You're speaking to me – I mean _hello, _have you **met me**? I'm madder than _the_ Hatter.

* * *

{**dum vita est, spes est**}  
(_every sunset means we've lived another day_)  
...

_[_Madame Rhea Di'Ey_]_

When Nemu Kurotsuchi was a little girl, her father fell ill.

And it wasn't the sort of illness that nails you to a coffin – though she wishes that would have been the case – but the sort of illness that that makes you _sick. _Up there, in the head. Now, Mayuri had never been the sanest person in existence (_insanity is something bone-deep that you carry __around like a shield and pass to others__ from marrow to marrow; __a dented imprint __in your DNA__ that doesn't go away not now, not ever_), but it's a rather impressive jump from being on the fucked-up side of the spectrum to abducting, torturing and experimenting on people; especially if your preferred victims are children and your own daughter is one of them.

[she remembers blood, and tears, and gasped screams; Cirucci's cold hand grasping hers until the digits broke from the pressure. she never minded. she could never feel pain, anyway.]

Only four "subjects", as Mayuri oh-so-eloquently referred to them, made it through all of it until the end.

Nemu hands the fourth of them the scalpel he asked of her, and wonders idly why were they the ones to live. "Thank you," the pink-haired medic murmurs quietly to her. "Hold still," he dictates sternly, and the curly-haired woman laid flat on her back on the steel surgical table rolls her amethyst eyes at him as he plunges the sterile blade into her shoulder, scooping around for a bullet.

Cirucci hisses, and clutches Nemu's hand tighter.

[she doesn't feel it, but she sees the woman's fingers tremble as they grab at her fingers, and she squeezes back; it has become an unconscious reflex – a means to comfort her only solace. Cirucci was always something akin to their personal temple, somehow.]

Nemu remembers another time and a different sort of hiss leaving those lips.

_Screams fill the soundproofed basement, hopeless sobs and pleads mixing into one pitiful serenade. A sobbing girl laid in her birthday suit on the dirty floor, a much, much older man leering over her barely developed form. His hands, with long bony fingers, were digging painfully into her sides, grabbing her hips and forcing her to keep semi-still. __His hands, with long bony fingers, making her rock against his hips, facilitating the fulfillment of her rape. Cirucci screamed harder, before going utterly unresponsive._

_Mayuri growled in disappointment. He slapped his "toy" once, twice, thrice..._

_No response._

_He grunted out a curse and hauled himself up, his erection sliding easily out of his day's victim of choice. He lifted the limp, unconscious girl off of the floor by the hair and thrown her on the nearby iron-wrought bed covered with an ambiguously comfortable mattress. She landed with a dull thud._

_The man scratched his chin. He turned to the other three children occupying the room, kept trapped inside the room with a cuff and a chain tied around the left ankle, and grinned._

_"Cirucci doesn't seem to be able to play with me anymore...who shall replace her, eh?" he said, smile deranged and eerie, all teeth and malice.  
_

She had clutched her hand back then, too. When she came back to her senses, that is – and then together they comforted Szayel, because in the end, he was the unlucky one that particular night.

[it was like that every single night, without exceptions. he broke them down from outside in and inside out, one sick experiment and rape episode at a time.]

Nemu pumps the syringe expertly, emptying the healthy dose of morphine into Cirucci's vein through the thick needle. She hums in a barely audible tone, eyes dull, unreadable, and motions robotic but mindful of her patient's injury. Szayel stitches the gunshot wound up as quickly and as painlessly as he can; the woman moans in pain, closing her eyes uncomfortably. "Help her wash and dress," the medic advises quietly as he sews. "We'll set her up to a double IV after. She needs a blood transfusion and nutrients; we'll give her a good dose of analgesics, too, though it would be better if you injected these directly."

"Should we give her some Valium, too?"

The pink-haired man snorts. "Who are you kidding?" he asks, tone of voice tired, exasperated, a bit whiny and full of hidden concern all at once. The corners of Nemu's lips twitch and raise in a barely-there smile as she listens to him rant. "This is Cirucci we're speaking about, _of course_ we're giving her sleeping pills! I don't exactly fancy my injured patient running around the medical ward because she's _bored_," he grits out, childishly. He swats at her with his free hand lightly. "Don't be silly, dear, you're far above it."

"As you say, Szayel."

Nemu walks away, hips swaying slightly from side to side. Out of the corner of his eye, he watches her go. A million thoughts run through his head with the speed of sound, and all he can do in retaliation to the metronome buzz in his head is gnaw at his bottom lip. Cirucci sighs beneath him, and he looks down. Amber eyes soften the moment they see her face.

The tears she had been holding back the whole time fall freely down her ivory cheeks. She's paler than usual, in a way only sick people are; but a fire is burning within her, and he can see the flush spreading over her ivory skin. She'll start to run a fever and shake pretty soon – her body always does that after it runs out of adrenaline.

Szayel wipes her tears with his free hand, his thumb gently caressing her left cheekbone. "Shh. It's okay."

She smiles through the tears, and mouths a simple _thank you._

* * *

The medical wing isn't really all that big. It only contains Szayel's laboratory, the ER where everyone goes for treating, the surgical hall (_Because we need a damn sterile environment, Archer-boy. You can't really ask of me to take you apart and put you back together to make it hurt less on the kitchen table, you know?_), and the recovery rooms – one for each of them, spacious enough to be filled with any equipment that might be needed. The pink-haired medic-slash-scientist changes Cirucci's bandages wordlessly, eyes faraway.

"Where's Nemu?" the woman inquires softly.

"Helping out Archer-boy with dinner."

Cirucci frowns at the short answer she receives from him. "What's wrong?" she asks, tone low. Szayel frowns, his mouth pulling into a tight line.

"We don't know, to be honest with you. Our brokers have ceased responding to the coded messages. We might've been...found," he replies, sighing, his cold hands stopping their careful movement. "Uryuu is scared. And that in itself is terrifying, for me; Nemu, I don't know – she lost most if not all of her basic human reactions throughout that hell she had for a childhood. But she seems to be quite unsettled, too."

The violette bits her lip, and after sighing one more time, the medic resumes his work. His hands are strangely warm against her skin when they touch in passing the exposed flesh of her shoulder and chest. He's focused more on the wound than on her body, and she's alright with that. Szayel had never been carnal; not really. Not after what they've been through.

[sometimes, she wishes he would've been. those gentle hands would make him a wonderful lover.]

"We'll have to relocate, won't we," she says, more a statement than a question. Boneless, the medic shrugs.

"Most likely."

"It feels as if we're running away," she comments, and doesn't look at him. Instead, she grips the bedsheets tight in a white-knuckled hold, and feels the desperate urge to spill someone's innards on a white floor.

White always looks so pretty after crimson blood has stained it.

He slaps her hand lightly, and it feels like a bee sting. Her vice clench relaxes instantly. "We've always been on the run, my dear. Now, up you go," he says lightly, and helps her rise from the bed. She leans into his side, barefoot on the faux marble tiles, and doesn't protest as he leads her to the kitchen. He eases her onto a chair.

Nemu smiles at them easily, something small and barely-there, but genuine and lovely. The warmth is a tangible thing that wafts through the air, and it feels like home. Something aches collectively in their chests, hidden deep in the ribcage where a heart is supposed to sit; somehow, the concept of mundane things like families make them feel blasphemous.

They are a crime against the very notions involved with the word.

"Szayel? How spicy should I make her food?"

"Moderately," the pink-haired medic answers, and Cirucci pouts. A collective rumble of laughter lights up the room at her reaction, and she can't hold off a fond eyeroll.

[_e__verything will be fine if we keep on breathing, _she can't help but think. _we're family, and that's something they'll never take away from us._]


End file.
